


Last Chance

by forgetmenotjimmy



Series: The Smoke-Eater Inn [1]
Category: Chicago Fire, Hotel Hell RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Angry Kelly, Benny Severide Got Around, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Past Infidelity, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 12:18:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetmenotjimmy/pseuds/forgetmenotjimmy
Summary: “So this is going to be a disaster.” Shay said sardonically. Kelly grunted in agreement, though his stomach churned. They were in so much debt – it was driving his mother insane to be trapped with a failing inn, crippling debts and worse of all, surrounded by living, and screeching, reminders of her ex-husband’s betrayals. On Kelly’s other side, Matt said confidently.“It’ll work.” Kelly’s jaw tightened and he stalked away.We meet the staff at the Smoke-Eater Inn before the cameras get there. Ramsey has his work cut out!





	Last Chance

It was almost funny, Kelly supposed as he looked around the room at the various women out-peacocking each other. All of the gathered women were excited about the announcement that they’d be on TV and all of them would be seen by millions as self-centred harpies sucking his family business dry. Well, technically it was still his father’s inn, but with Benny only around long enough to glance at the books and nod vaguely before taking off again, it was basically Kelly’s and his mom’s.

He sensed a presence come up to his shoulder. Turning his head a little he saw Shay, her arms crossed and mouth curling up as she surveyed the scene.

“So this is going to be a disaster.” She commented.

Kelly grunted in agreement, though his stomach churned. They were in so much debt – it was driving his mother insane to be trapped with a failing inn, crippling debts and worse of all, surrounded by living, and screeching, reminders of her ex-husband’s betrayals. Benny only visited when he was bored or needed to borrow some cash, but he still had the authority to make decisions at the inn and that included who worked or lived there. So sometimes when his latest fling ended, he’d bring them back to the inn, as if a room or a job there could make up for whatever he’d done. Kelly’s mom always said she’d up and quit with the next arrival, but she didn’t, couldn’t, considering that abandoning the place would mean leaving Kelly’s childhood home and her only source of income – small as it was.

“Maybe I’m a coward, but I just can’t leave this place.” She’d once drunkenly mused. Kelly hadn’t commented, just topped up her drink.

On Kelly’s other side, Matt said confidently .“It’ll work.”

Kelly’s jaw tightened.

Shay glanced at him before replying.“You think so?”

Matt nodded, his eyes sliding over Kelly’s face. Kelly grunted and stalked away to find his mom. She was in the office, moving papers around. Kelly’s heart clenched; she always did that when she was stressed.

“Hey.” He ventured, not sure what to say – same as always.

“Hey.” His mom mustered up a tired smile – like always.

He slipped in and put an arm around her shoulder. She squeezed his hand and sighed.

He tilted his head. “You should take the night off, let the others run the place for once.”

Jennifer considered his suggestion, groaning as she replied. “And find the place trashed from all the fighting, or worse, covered in all of Penelope’s crap?”

Kelly forced a laugh, rubbing her shoulder. “We’ll manage for one night, if you like you can keep your phone on…”

Jennifer looked up at her son, then sighed heavily. “Well Angela has been raging about this new bar that’s opened up across town.”

Kelly smiled. “Go. Me and Shay and the others have got this.”

She fussed and fretted some more things as he ushered her out of the door, but she went. Avoiding the gathered crows in the dining room by using a side passage, Kelly slipped into the kitchen, steeling himself for the busy night ahead. Thanks to April’s aggressive marketing campaign on social media and around town, they were expecting a lot of middle-aged women at the bar looking to get drunk and dance under the hokey disco ball she’d insisted they re-install a few weeks ago. Jennifer had bemoaned struggling for years to get rid of it only for April to come along and put it right back up.

“It’ll be fun!” April had screeched, elbowing Kelly and winking. “Which is what we need more of around here!”

He’d grimaced and invented an excuse to leave the conversation. That was how the majority of his interactions with his father’s exes went – except Beth. He felt sorry for her and her sons; so crippled by debt that they’d had to foreclose their house and move into the inn. She was a good person and an amazing mother to the boys but…the bitterness and stress of the situation had hardened her a lot. Just being in her presence could be uncomfortable: the waves of anger radiating off her almost tangible. Then again, there was a lot of general tension in the inn.

Penelope brought that up a lot – claiming everyone needed her special brand of bubble bath mix or a massage at her ‘spa’ – which was just the old office for her ‘treatment room’ and a corner of reception for her desk. Mouch joked that she only claimed that space as an excuse to be across from Matt, who was on the hotel desk most of the time. Matt always shuddered dramatically whenever that had been brought up and Andy had always laughed, offering semi-seriously to sacrifice himself so Matt could make a break for it. Kelly tried not to linger on memories of Andy at the hotel, though it was hard as he’d worked there almost as long as Kelly had. God, he missed him.

In the kitchen, Kelly made the rounds, checking prep was on course. Tony was on meat prep, Capp blitzing for the soups and humming tunelessly to himself, and their newest recruit, Peter Mills, was on veg, working diligently and enthusiastically. It made Kelly feel old, even though he was only a few years the boy’s senior. He looked over Mills’ shoulder at his technique and was slightly annoyed that he couldn’t find fault with it. Although grateful for the help after they’d lost Vargas through unfortunate circumstances, Kelly couldn’t help but be annoyed by his peppiness and the way he flirted with Dawson – one of the servers. The sound of their giggling as Dawson hung around the pass, or worse, play-fighting at staff meetings, dug under his skin. It had nothing to do with the look on Matt’s face when he saw them, Kelly told himself. Shay half-joked the other day that Kelly seemed to be irritated by everything those days. As much as he hated it, Kelly couldn’t really disagree. He went to help Tony with filleting the fish and tried to let the monotony of the work clear his mind.

…

At the reception desk, Matt was flipping through the reservations book as if going back and forth over the next few months would magically increase the number of bookings.

“How’s it looking?” Came a voice accompanied by a cup of coffee. Matt straightened up and raised an eyebrow. Gabby shrugged as much as she could whilst holding the cup. “You look like you needed one.”

“Thanks.” He said sarcastically as he accepted it. She just smiled and watched as he drank some.

“So, how is it looking?” She nodded to the book.

Matt sighed. “Bout the same as usual.

“So, bad.” She concluded. “Well luckily we have a super-cool event on tonight to attract loads more customers.”

Matt groaned, though he snuck a glance across the way to check Penelope wasn’t there.

Gabby snorted. “Better stay away from the dance floor unless you want her showing you her moves.”

Matt shuddered. “Don’t even joke.”

“Why? I think it’s cute!” She put on a fairly accurate imitation of Penelope’s smoky voice. “Matt, why don’t you try one of my massage therapies? They’d do wonders for those broad shoulders of-”

“Gabriela!” They both flinched as April swept up to the desk. “Shouldn’t you be helping the team set up the dining room?”

“Yes. I was just checking-”

“I’m not interested in your excuses, young lady.” April bit out.

Gabby bristled and Matt felt a flash of amusement through his sympathetic anger. Two things got under Gabby’s skin like nothing else: people using her full name and calling her ‘young lady’. She wasn’t afraid of airing her grievances or questioning April’s authority to give her orders – which to be fair was not as much authority as April pretended to have. This occurrence was so frequent that imitating a confrontation between the two women had become a favoured pastime for the wait staff.

Still, Matt laid a warning hand on Gabby’s arm and addressed April respectfully. “I’m sorry, April. I was keeping her.”

April’s head snapped to look at him, her expression souring even more. Used to it, Matt didn’t cower, instead staring back evenly.

April twisted her lip and turned back to Gabby. “Just get back to work.”

Gabby’s eyes flashed and she opened her mouth but Matt stepped on her foot warningly and she shut it again. Shooting him a look, she stalked back into the dining room.

“Are you on shift tonight?” April asked.

The front desk and the hotel side of the business wasn’t under her jurisdiction, but Matt had learned long ago when to pick his battles.

“Yes, till 9pm.”

“Then who’s taking over?”

“Cruz.”

“No, I need Joe behind the bar tonight.”

Matt’s fists clenched behind the desk. He swallowed the irritation though and countered. “I thought Herrmann and Mouch were on bar tonight.”

April flicked some loose strands of hair out of her eyes. “As lovely as they are, Herrmann and Mouch aren’t really the best suited for tonight’s event.” At Matt’s blank expression, she elaborated. “We’ll have a lot of young, eligible ladies looking for a fun night.”

Matt got the idea and wasn’t sure he should be horrified or amused.

A mixture of both made him say. “Cruz doesn’t know how to mix all of the cocktails. He’ll need some help.”

April sighed in a put-upon way – which meant that she’d realised the validity of his statement. “It’s my event, I’ll sort it. Just stay at your post.”

He watched her leave and let out a long breath. All of Benny’s exes – save for Jennifer – were difficult to deal with in their own way but April was definitely his least favourite. He rubbed his eyes. God, he was so tired. They’d had to let go of their housekeeper, the divinely sardonic Connie, which not only meant that there was one less crusader against the exes’ insanity but that Matt’s workload had increased tenfold. He was the only full-time front of house staff member; everyone else who had been trained on the desk was usually poached for other areas. Generally, he did the day shifts and Jennifer did nights. Now they had no housekeeper, they split the cleaning between them.

Suffice to say they were struggling. Jennifer had brought up the issue with the other exes, asking them to commit a few hours a week to help out until they could afford to hire someone else. No dice. For one reason or another they all refused. They couldn’t ask any of the other staff to help without taking them away from their duties so Matt proposed they limit bookings to a few select rooms and only clean those. This would make the other rooms dusty and harder to bring back to a habitable level but it was better than rushing through cleaning all of them. Together, he and Jennifer drew up a cleaning and laundry schedule. Jennifer bumped up his salary as much as she could for the extra hours but it really wasn’t much. Matt didn’t mind – he wasn’t working there for the pay after all.

What he didn’t like was how some people looked down on him but there wasn’t much he could do about that so he kept that to himself. It was a small town, the only people who didn’t _know _about his family were the tourists. The problems with the inn were: the internal power struggles, the lack of staff and the out-dated décor. Hopefully Ramsey could help them out with those; could help them save the place.

…

In the dining room, Shay saw Gabby storming in and suppressed a groan. Things were already tense with the limited time to prep the room to April’s weird specifications, they didn’t need any additional drama. A few months ago she would have been amused but she was Head Waitress now and had to answer to April if the event planner wasn’t happy with the wait staff’s conduct – which happened lot. Shay didn’t have Andy’s charm to win the woman over – it seemed like he’d been the only one who could calm her down. No matter how logical or level-headed Shay was, April would still find something to take issue with.

Thinking about Andy and the hole he left behind made her feel sad and tired, so she internally shook herself and went back to overseeing Otis and Stella setting the tables for dinner. They were currently racing to see who could set the most tables in 10 minutes and she was going behind them, making note of all the corrections to point out once they were done. Gabby joined her, flattening her fringe as she often did when she was riled up about something.

“Grrr…” She vocalised when in range. “She’s just so-!” She adopted a posh-lady-with-a-handbag posture. “I’m not interested in your excuses Gabriela!” Shay laughed despite herself before glancing around to check April wasn’t in earshot.

“I win!” Otis declared as his watch beeped the end of the time.

“No way!” Stella argued. The two refused to concede until Shay stepped in with her criticisms and declared it a tie.

“When it’s not such an important day, you can have another contest.” Shay tried to placate their pouts.

“But boss, isn’t every service important?” Otis sassed. Shay just raised her eyebrow at him and he smiled awkwardly.

They all got back to work. Gabby sidled up to Stella and remarked. “But you really won.”

“Right?” Stella joked. Shay coughed pointedly and they all finished prepping the hall.

Service was better than usual as when April’s events included a meal she would confuse the staff with conflicting orders or make odd decisions like immediately comping a meal for a customer that had complained instead of trying to fix the problem first. She was the biggest obstacle to a smooth service, well, her and Penelope wandering in and handing out flyers for her spa/yoga business.

Shay was sceptical about Ramsey coming in – sure, getting some of the place renovated would be a boon, but if the meddling exes problem wasn’t resolved, then it could serve as bad publicity for the inn. Kelly and his mom had suffered enough. It would be hard enough to have their family’s business broadcast across the country, but for the inn to fail anyway…Still, maybe Matt was right and it would work. Positive thinking, she told herself, before going to greet some new customers.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is just the set up. I'm going to post the actual 'episodes' in script format in two parts and then there will be a final fic to show what happened after the 'episodes' aired. Part 1 is pretty much done, I just need to type it up and proof-read, but I hit a brick wall with part 2 so I'm taking a break from it for now. I have another Sevasey fic in the works now so that might come out first.  
Anyway, let me know what you think!  
:D


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